captainsolo's various LD conversion questions....

So my new player is a Pioneer CLD-D504 and I've been wanting to do some caps with digital audio. The digital tracks are outputted through standard rca though. How does this work and is there any large difference in quality over optical/coaxial? I had no idea the digital could even be outputted this way.

I figured as much. Thanks hh!

Capturing vs. Ripping

is a matter of semantics. Hope I'm not being pedantic.

You could capture the signal, as hairy_hen described, from the left/right red/white RCA jacks.

Or you could rip it from D504's S/PDIF port, which also uses an RCA-style socket.

More expensive players like CLD-D704, which offer both the RCA-style S/PDIF port
as well as the optical fiber style (Toshiba's TosLink), are expected to give identical data from either port.

So yes, theoretically you could rip PCM or DTS (but not AC3) from your S/PDIF port as long as you've got computer hardware & software which supports doing it.
Typically you'd have to jump through some hoops to prevent Windows sabotaging your efforts.

The d504 doesn't have S/PDIF. It only has an AC3 out.

Would you believe I don't own that model?
No really

Wonder if it contains Sony's CXD1125, 1135 or CXD2500 chip inside?
The first two have the digital audio signal on pin 27. With CXD2500 you'd tap pin 60 to get it.

Seems likely D504 has one of those chips in; however, this site suggests it would probably be mounted on the under side of the motherboard.

I got lucky doing the mod on my CLD-S201, since the audio is on a daughter card (mounted vertically) giving easy access to both sides of the circuit board. It's a bottom-feeder in features and probably picture quality too, but I only use it for ripping. For that purpose, bit-accurate is good enough.

With basic soldering skills, adding S/PDIF can be fairly easy on some players.
If D504's your new one, what's the old?

I have the Pioneer CLD-D504, and you will need a RF-demodulator to decode the AC-3 signal from that optical port.

I use a Kenwood DEM999 Laserdisc RF Demodulator.

FF

Thanks for the help and suggestions guys.

FF-was this the player you used for your original Criterion Bond transfers?

My actual player is a CLD-D702, but it's back home and I didn't want to risk damaging it by shipping it several states. (and paying at least $30 in shipping)

The D504 was the best one I could get that actually worked. It's borrowed from someone who doesn't use it that much so I can't really do any modification work to it. I've started capturing with the analog enabled for a test. The analog and digital sound virtually the same going through RCA anyway.

My test disc is the 1989 series LBX You Only Live Twice.

captainsolo said:

 

FF-was this the player you used for your original Criterion Bond transfers?

Yes it was, but I was using a crap DV codec to capture. Take that into consideration.

Ah. Just was curious since you mentioned you had a D504. I used a DV capture codec in Final Cut and got this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIah3ZdGXNU

Anybody know what might have caused these frames? Possibly glue?

Yes, certainly looks like an optical splice. I assume these frame are either side of a shot change?

Yes they are from a shot change. Thank goodness it's only these three.

New question: when I make my 16:9 cropped lossless mov in MPEG Streamclip it default checks Interlaced Scaling. What exactly does this do? I compared a file with and without this option and all it seemed to do was make the frame size a bit larger.

Possibly related to the chroma upsampling method used during a colourspace conversion? (I don't know, I've never used MPEG Streamclip). Basically, if you're converting video that uses the YV12 colourspace into YUY2 or RGB, the chroma needs to be upsampled differently depending on whether the video is progressive or interlaced.

But then, I don't know why enabling this option would make the video larger.

Ahh. That seems to be it. BTW it didn't make it larger-my eyes were deceiving me. I shouldn't have trusted them.

New question or two:

I've captured in a DV codec on a mac into Final Cut Pro. Then I combined the sides, added back some frames and exported out the lossless .mov file. Then I run those through MPEG Streamclip into Apple ProRes 422HQ and crop the frame to 720x405 for anamorphic displays. What I'm trying to do now is get the 60gb mov to a dual layer DVD with DVD Studio Pro deinterlaced if at all possible. I ran one mov through Compressor and used the pulldown removal option and the result looks pretty good. I'm just not sure if I can't get better results IVTC ing through FCP or with Cinema Tools.

Also I've never really filtered captured analog video before, so I wasn't really going to mess with it, but after working with these files I'd like to get them looking as good as they possibly can. Anybody have any Final Cut filtering suggestions?